Posts Tagged ‘Russia’

The Arctic Sea & the North Korea/Middle East connection

Sunday, October 18th, 2009
The ship's name may appear to be the North Korean cargo ship, Jin Jon 2, but don't be fooled: it's still the Arctic Sea.

The ship's name may appear to be the North Korean cargo ship, Jin Jon 2, but don't be fooled: it's still the Arctic Sea.

(Part Four, in an apparently never ending series.)

The last time we left off the saga of the Arctic Sea, the crew had been freed by the (once again mighty?) Russian navy–after a bizarre incidence of piracy in European water. But now, you’d think with the alleged pirates thrown into the slammer, the story would end. And yet …

What exactly befell the ship, called the Arctic Sea, is still largely unknown. In fact, nearly eight weeks after it was supposedly liberated by the Russian Navy, the ship is said to remain at sea under military control and has yet to make port for needed repairs. Four members of the ship’s crew have not been able to leave, despite repeated calls by their families for their release.

As if that wasn’t strange enough, one more bizarre tidbit has leaked out: the hijackers tried to change the name of the ship to “Jon Jin 2.” It just so happens that the name, as well as the corresponding identification number, belong to a North Korean general cargo ship. Which looks nothing like the Arctic Sea, and was docked in Angola at the time.

Photographs from the Russian Prosecutor General’s Investigative Committee document the new name, painted on the ship:

Jon Jin 2 -- nope, really, its the Arctic Sea.

The Arctic Sea's masquerade.

The second in in command insists there was nothing but lumber on the ship.

“There was only lumber on board,” Mr. Falin said. “I was personally in all areas and in the ballast tanks. There was nothing else in there. I can say this with 100 percent certainty.”

Perhaps. Hijackers, what do you have to say for yourselves?

The hijackers … continue to deny any wrongdoing, maintaining that they were ecologists conducting research in the Baltic Sea when they encountered inclement weather and sought refuge aboard the Arctic Sea.

Well, I bet those Russian government officials and investigators will give us the straight truth. The government, naturally, maintains that there was nothing but lumber aboard as well, but why would the wayward “ecologists” commandeer this ship in heavily trafficked/policed European waters? Why would Russia send warships on a frantic chase … three weeks after the hijacking? And why would they not let the crew go over a month later, nor let the ship dock? The Russian government line and Choose Your Own Ending to the Tale, after the jump.

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The mystery of the Arctic Sea is resolved. Yet, it continues.

Thursday, August 20th, 2009
Crew members of the Arctic Sea deplaning just outside Moscow (Russia TV)

Crew members of the Arctic Sea deplaning just outside Moscow (Russia TV)

I apologize if you’re getting tired of this story, but I find it endlessly fascinating. Piracy in Europe! (Pirates, outside of Africa and Asia?!) A resurgent Russia’s military might! For initiates, here’s a timeline from the AP of the events. So what’s happened since the last post?

Yesterday, the Russian spokesman for their defense ministry said that the pirates/hijackers (initially identified as Swedish police searching for drugs) had threatened to shoot the crew and sink the boat unless a $1.5 million ransom was paid. The boat’s insurer confirmed the story. The Russians arrested the 8 hijackers without firing a shot this week off of Cape Verde, three weeks after the ship had disappeared.

The AP article leaves off with a series of unanswered questions:

Why would the hijackers seize a small freighter carrying only about $2 million in timber? Were the hijackers actually seeking something of greater value, drugs, weapons or nuclear materials, perhaps? Why was it first reported that the hijackers had boarded the vessel in the Baltic Sea, bound and beaten the crew and then left?

The last question seems to have been resolved: the hijackers actually had stayed aboard, and had the crew report that eveything was fine when the ship traversed the straits of Dover.

The Financial Times threw a little more reporting into their story:

But the little information released by Russia so far has failed to convince many skeptics and speculation continued to swirl on Wednesday that the ship, which ostensibly was carrying €1.3m worth of timber, may have been carrying a secret cargo.

A former commander of the Estonian defence force, Tarmo Kouts, said in an article published Wednesday that the heavy contingent of naval vessels Russia sent to track down the ship indicated the Arctic Sea may have been involved in arms trafficking. “Only the presence of cruise missiles on board the ship can explain Russia’s strange behaviour in this whole story,” Mr Kouts said in Wednesday’s Postimees. Mr Kouts said the three battleships and one frigate Russia sent to find the ship was a much stronger naval unit than those involved in combating pirates off the coast of Somalia.

An executive at the Finland-based company that owned the vessel, Solchart, told the FT on Tuesday that “anything was possible”. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said that a secret cargo may have been the target of the hijackers and may have been hidden on the ship when it anchored in Kaliningrad for repairs before it sailed for Finland where it was loaded with timber.

This may help explain the fairly extensive Russian involvement, especially in attacking the ship and freeing a crew, sailing under the flag of Malta. Granted, an Estonian talking about Russia would not necessarily want to show Russia in the kindest light. To throw some more speculative wood onto the fire, this may simply be about Russia showing its extended reach, flexing its naval muscles a bit. It’s not just the U.S. that can take down pirates, this seems to say. The FT piece ends with a more mundane answer:

One Russian businessman with knowledge of the shipping business said indications were growing that part of the ship’s 15 man crew may have conspired with the gang of eight men to seize the ship in effort to squeeze funds out of the ship’s owners.

Perfectly logical. And yet, the Kremlin has been so outspoken about the seizure. Russia is definitely milking this event for what its worth. Would I go so far as to say that this could be a PR stunt for Russian military might? No. But as the executive from the shipping company said, “anything is possible.”

(HT: Tom Dolan)

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The mystery of the Arctic Sea

Monday, August 17th, 2009
You couldn't pay me to take this ship somewhere.

You couldn't pay me to take this ship somewhere.

The missing cargo ship has been found! Not that it reveals anything about what happened:

A cargo ship missing since late last month with its Russian crew of 15 and $2 million worth of lumber was located on Monday 300 miles off West Africa’s Cape Verde, the Russia Defense Ministry reported. … it vanished seemingly without a trace off the coast of Portugal in late July. It was not immediately clear how the ship remained undetected for so long, or how it was lost in the first place.

Uhh… let’s go to the Russsian defense minister:

“The Arctic Sea was discovered at 1 a.m. Moscow time today, 300 miles off the Cape Verde islands,” Mr. Serdyukov said. “All crew members are alive, and they are feeling well. They were not under armed control,” he said.

Wait, what? The Cape Verde islands are a bit far from the ship’s last reporter position off Portugal (former colonizer of Cape Verde … coincidence?) which is about 2,000 miles away from the islands off the coast of West Africa.

As an aside, I enjoy that Mr. Serdukov made sure to say they are “feeling well.” Feeling well, as in, their ship disappeared for nearly a month, but don’t worry, they’re doing fine? Or that they’re doing alright because it’s not like one of their crew members turned out to be an axe murderer? Or that they’re “feeling well” because at least they weren’t captured by Somalia pirates, as was rumored?

It’s like a campfire ghost story–what happened to the ship’s crew to make them disappear? Nobody knows.

Whether or not modern-day pirates were involved, something strange befell the Arctic Sea, which was flying a Maltese flag, as it headed into the Atlantic on July 31 en route to a port in Algeria.

I guesss it missed Algeria as well. Apparently, not the best navigators are piloting this ship.

More backstory after the jump, including the bizarre Swedish drug raid:

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The North Korean strategy gets all Cold War on us

Monday, August 10th, 2009

If a domino falls in East Asia and no one is around to hear it, does it matter?

Shhh… nobody say Domino Theory.

No, we’re suddenly caught up in containment:

Mr. Obama won a little-publicized victory in that effort a few weeks ago when the White House used newly granted authority from the United Nations to put a destroyer on the tail of the Kang Nam I, a rusting cargo ship believed to be taking weapons to Myanmar, formerly Burma. No one is sure what the cargo was, and the Navy avoided a direct confrontation. But the Kang Nam finally turned around and went home, its cargo undelivered.

Still, there are reasons to wonder whether containment of North Korea can work. The core idea is that wariness and time are the best instruments with which to let a corrupt, inept government rot from within, as when the Soviet Union collapsed. “I wish they’d conduct a nuclear test every week,” a member of Mr. Obama’s team joked recently, referring to estimates that North Korea has only enough fuel for 8 to 12 weapons.

I think this might be the best wonk-joke I’ve ever seen (which is not saying all that much).

So containment? Did that work for Russia? Or did Glasnost do in the old Soviet Union? And isn’t Putin just reconstituting the USSR anyway? These are questions for an international relations term paper.

Setting aside questions of historical analogies, why would containment not work?

The problem is that every American president since Harry Truman has underestimated how much rot the North Korean regime could withstand. Each thought the North could fall on his watch. After all, it has been the most sanctioned nation on earth since the early 1950’s, and it has recently cut the few deep economic ties that it made in the past decade with the South.

Ah, that. So what are the other options? Threaten invasion? I’d be interested in what my dear readers have to say.

I think one of the most fascinating aspects of the article comes in very late: “there are unconfirmed reports that the North is helping the Burmese build a reactor in their country.” Let’s just hope containment does better at stopping nuclear proliferation than, say, the efforts against A.Q. Khan in Pakistan/Iran.

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I wish I worked in Russian PR

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

George is alleging that Russia attempted to support a mutinous tank unit in overthrowing Saakashvili’s government. The Russian spokesperson will clearly have none of it:

“We have information that the Russian Federation wants to exacerbate the situation in Georgia,” Mr. Saakashvili said. “We are asking our northern neighbor to refrain from any provocations.”

Russian officials denied any role in the unrest. Alexei Pavlov, a spokesman for President Dmitri A. Medvedev, called the accusations “too stupid for us to comment on.”

“We don’t consider it necessary to respond to these accusations,” he said. “Georgia is constantly accusing us of something. It doesn’t matter what. All of the internal problems in Georgia are blamed on Russia.”

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